


Expat

by roughmagic



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Blindfolds, Complete, Dirty Talk, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gun Kink, M/M, Other, Risen/Dark Ages!Guardian, Spoilers, look at his whole loyalty quest and tell me drifter's not a bottom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:07:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: Where were you, he wants to ask, that he never saw you once? What did you see? What have you survived? He wants to know almost as much as he wants to share. Anyone their age either goes legit, falls off the deep end, or gets got.Reader/Drifter





	Expat

**Author's Note:**

> I got enchanted by that video of the guy shoulder-firing a PTRS and (Eric Andre voice) “What if it was DESTINY?”

He’d be lying if he’d said he hadn’t noticed you before—and if asked, he had an easy out: you’re hard to miss, even among Guardians. Drifter’s never not looking through scrap for usable parts, and you stick out like big, gleaming salvage. 

Since the Vanguard is turning a blind eye to his half-closed shutter and thematically lit hallway, he’s felt alright hustling some crates in from one of his personal stashes. Just supplies, trinkets, some pieces he’s working on, nothing he’d miss if it walked off, but he likes to have his stuff around him. Things to keep his hands busy, background noise for his brain.

He’s collecting the last couple of crates transmitted into the loading dock, and he stacks both with a little difficulty, stopping to lean against them and watch. They’ve got you just rearranging and coordinating cargo deliveries and exchanges, even the tallest dock workers barely coming up to your shoulder, even out of armor.

You exchange some one-word pleasantries with a cargo frame, who bobs a nod and continues on towards the next pile of junk. Drifter makes himself unavoidable in your path, hands on his hips.

“What’d you eat to grow that big? I’ve seen Kells smaller’n you.”

“It’s a family secret,” You straighten up and give him a look like you’re judging how much force it would take to throw him over your shoulder. Probably not much, and he probably wouldn’t mind. “Friend.”

“Well, if we’re friends…” He grins, gestures to his own crates. “Mind helping me? Ain’t going far.”

You shoot him a smile as he hands you one crate—you can wedge it under an arm, and you gesture with a free hand. “Give me both." 

Oh, he likes you already. “Show off.”

“It’s a matter of balance.”

He trails beside you as the two of you move through the service corridors of the tunnel, out of sight and mind of all the Guardians, and hopefully, the Vanguard.

“Now, forgive my curiosity, but what’s a hale ‘n healthy Guardian like you doing grunt work in the Tower for?” He raps the back of his knuckles against your arm, watches for a flinch or reaction and gets nothing. “It’s a beautiful day out there, lots of places to see, things to kill.”

“I’m on probation. No Vanguard activities, or Crucible.”

Interesting. “Must’ve done somethin’ real bad, huh?” He cranks the shutter open, and then even a bit higher so you don’t have to stoop to get into his alleyway.

Your mouth twists into a wry smile. “Apparently.”

“Against the wall, there, if you’d please.” He gestures and you set them both down, one at a time, gentle-like. When you straighten up, he watches you look around, examining the Gambit banner pinned up like it’s a new sight. “Well, why not hang with me? Gambit’s sure as hell not a Vanguard activity. It’s a cryin’ shame to see you wasting away haulin’ boxes around.” 

You keep looking, hands in your pockets, and you keep him waiting too. He thinks you might not’ve heard him about the same time you finally look at him. “Would you like that?”

He feels a weird flash of indignation and flattery, not expecting that question. “Hey, it’s a mutual benefit sort of thing—you bring me motes, I pay you. Wouldn’t insult you by asking for free labor.” 

There’s a squaring of your shoulder as you turn towards him more, and Drifter finds himself looking up to meet your eyes. You plant a boot on the crate right beside him, leaning forward to grate it against the floor. “You just did.”

Is this a come on? He sort of hopes it’s a come on. “Ah, well—”

You leverage your weight off the box, turning to leave. “Thanks for the invite.” 

There wasn’t time for him to have screwed that up, he thinks, watching you lift the shutter and duck under and out, into the late afternoon light. He hadn’t done anything to scare you off, he hadn’t had the chance. It occurs to him that when he lets go of the breath he’d suddenly took, rocks back on his heels and feels his back brush the wall, that maybe you’d left because you didn’t want to scare _him_ off.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite your brusque exit, it doesn’t take long for Gambit to pique your interest. Drifter watches you solo queue in: your ship, he notes as it syncs into the Haul’s local orbit, is sturdy garbage. The kind of over-engineered antique that’s hard to improve upon because it’s so stolidly basic.

It looks out of place with the three-stack fireteam he places you with: he knows these guys, they’re veterans, but casual. They play for the love of the game, but one word from the Vanguard and he knows they’d never come back. The fourth in their fireteam usually makes or breaks a game, he figures they’ll be a good control.

They’re a classic balanced trio: Titan chest thumping, Warlock cycling through weapons and Hunter dancing obnoxiously in the holding area before the match starts. The other team, he doesn’t know so well, but they don’t look like they came to have fun.

He’s got the whole spiel worked out by now, a little showmanship to get their attention, get their blood pumping. You don’t seem impressed by his coin tricks, but it’s not like he’s aiming for that.

The transmat puts the teams down in their separate enclosures in the EDZ, the first Fallen crews starting to surge through the back tunnels to meet the Guardians who have lit out to start collecting motes—although you seem to be dragging your heels, sticking around the rear wall, finding cover while your team charges into the destroyed courtyard to start reaping motes.

He drops into your private channel, watching you unshoulder your scout rifle, finally. “That’s quite the leisurely pace you’ve got goin’.”

 _“I work slow.”_ You line up the shot and squeeze in time with the exhale, a Captain jerked off clawed feet by the force of the round, his soul and ether mixing together as they escape the top of his ruined helmet. It scatters motes all over a Hunter, who whoops in delight and canters in a little circle to grab all of them.

Drifter makes a pleased noise in your ear as you settle into your pattern: you stay across the map and focus only on the convenient shot, the one that kills or staggers an enemy or reduces them to motes for your teammates. You don’t feel any need to charge in there and bank them yourself, and it leaves you unafraid when the first invader appears on the field.

He’s hardly gotten through his callout when you level your heavy at them—another rifle, so big you have to kneel to fully stabilize it for the shot, and he hasn’t seen anything so stupidly powerful and dangerously niche since the Dark Ages, that’s a _Warlord_ weapon, baby—and the shot rips the Hunter in half at the waist, his own Sleeper tumbling out of reach, and Drifter whoops, kicking his deck in a moment of shocked triumph and delight.

“You and me got a _date_ , I wanna see that rifle up close! Hot _damn_ hotshot! The Vanguard know you got that?”

_“Nobody sees the rifle.”_

It ain’t good form, but he definitely spends more time observing you for the match than the rest of your team, waiting for that rifle to show up again. The next invader drops instead as close as she can to you, figuring she’ll avoid the rifle all together, but you smash her mask with the butt end of it like a club and she goes down limp.

You finally jump into the fireteam chat, ignoring a Vandal wire rifle shot to toe at one of the motes left behind by the Hunter. _“Do we need these motes?”_

_“No, Forrest’s got seven he’s gonna bank and we’re good, you okay over there?”_

_“Just fine. Get set up for the Envoys.”_

The other three actually do it—they coordinate on the Envoys, they chatter and callout among themselves, working steadily at the Primeval. You stay back and work at the smaller Taken, with a kind of efficiency that the Drifter wants to think comes from a personal dislike of Hobgoblins. It’s a cute quality to imagine you’ve got.

 _“Other team’s about to invade,”_ The Hunter on your team announces. _“Ah, our fourth? You ready with your big fuck off gun?”_

_“No. Use your Tether and we’ll concentrate fire.”_

_“Roger, roger.” “Copy.” “Hm, okay.”_

The invader pops out of the warrens beneath the bank stage and gets off one good hit with a Chaperone that almost guts your Warlock, but Forrest is ready with his Tether and it manages to catch both the invader and the Primeval, the team chewing through his overshield and then the rest of him. You and the other Titan seem to feel some instinctual need for a good finisher, trading a friendly nod as you gain height on a jump, only to slam down two Supers on the flagging Primeval. Your thunder pulses through it like a heart while the first of many burning mauls rock the foundations of the bank, and that’s it. Round one is over.  

Drifter cheers, makes a point not to spare praise for the rest of your team, and watches the motes pour in, the second round almost a clean repeat of the last. You fall once to an invader’s Golden Gun, a truly spectacular shot landed almost all the way across the map, and Drifter hears your dazed smile and heavy breathing when your Ghost revives you. Does his best to avoid the spark that puts in his guts.

He lets your team hang out aboard the Derelict for a few moments afterwards, the threesome comparing gear and giving each other after-action notes, while you watch from a respectful distance, leaned up against a frosted railing.

“So? Gambit scratchin’ that itch you got?”

“It’s a good time.” Your helmet rolls a little light off it as you turn to look more towards him. “I like working with a team.”

“You want me to play matchmaker? They’re singin’ your praises, I bet they’d love you to stick around.”

“Nah.” You stand up to your full height, looking like you want to move on. “It’s important to play with different types of people.”

Well. Okay, yeah. Drifter is reminded that he’s got no idea what’s going on in your head, but at the very least, he might be able to sneak a look into your loadout. He gets closer than a regular friend would, keeping his voice low. “Well, maybe you and I oughta play together sometime. I’m gonna get a good look at that rifle, one way or another.”

He can see the microabrasions in your helmet at this range, although he does have to look up a little. You’re tall. “It’s just a gun.”

That puts a weird flush on his neck, maybe headed towards his cheeks. Maybe it’s the confidence that you say it with, or the fact that he’d gotten caught wanting something.

“See you tomorrow,” You give him a little lazy salute before transmatting away.

The Warlock on the other team makes some kissy noises and gets the other two hooting at him, so he slaps the transmat pad and flushes them into space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You do see him tomorrow—you run a daily schedule, aren’t one to over-indulge. You don’t stay for more than one match at a time, rarely every doing more than one match a day. Drifter doesn’t acknowledge you ever embarrassed him, and you don’t bring it up.

He’s honestly too busy to fixate, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t look forward to seeing your callsign in the roster. It’s like a daily break, a moment of breathing space, where he can relax and tangle himself in whatever this is. He learns you really do hate Hobgoblins, that you’ll drop what you’re doing to target them. You’re one of those polymath Guardians that can switch elements comfortably. The rifle only appears sparingly, the more you get used to Gambit, and you’ll talk shop all day with him about any other weapon.

He likes watching you, and your slow pace. It’s old-fashioned in a way he hasn’t seen since it was current, the deep breathing and patience of a predator stalking exhausted prey. A self-knowledge and a decisiveness to your shots. And he’s got about a thousand other irons in the fire, but he finds time to ask around. You’ve been a Guardian a long, long time, but never fell in with a steady fireteam. Sort of a dependable, regular loner type. He trades a ten kilo piece of raw tungsten to a Warlock in exchange for your contact details, although he never sends a message.

It doesn’t take much more than that and a couple of favors before he gets your address, one of the apartments honeycombed into the new Tower. Low level, the Tower stretching up large around like a smooth canyon.

Feelings weird to come calling like this, but you never give him enough time in Gambit to talk, and nowhere in the Tower’s truly private. Besides, Drifter thinks, knocking on your door, this shows initiative.

The door opens and lets out a breeze of hot air, funneling through from the open patio warmed by the sun and several solar heaters attached to the arrow-slit windows.

“Well! Home sweet home, is it?” He gets the pleasure of seeing surprise on your face, for the first time maybe ever. “You keep it toasty in here.”

You stand back, gesture him in. “Do you prefer your icebox?” 

Drifter can’t resist getting close as he passes, kissing range with the threat of intent. “Makes for good cuddlin’ weather.”

You just stare back, amused, and he gives up for the moment. 

The apartment really is hot, and you’ve got one of the rare patio suites, generally not preferred by Guardians for the amount of pigeon shit that they collect. Yours is pretty nice, a carousel of laundry drying in the sun, two chairs propped up. He wonders who the other one is for, even as he’s sitting down it.

“Make yourself at home.” You don’t sound annoyed, stirring around in the kitchen. There are a few paths through the mess, but it’s sort of impersonal cargo. Some books, some supplies, some mysterious packages. A dim Engram atop a pile of spinfoil plates. An empty heavy ammo synth. He feels the packrat in him wanting to sort through it all, explore what the things might say about you.

On the little table between the patio chairs, you set down a pretty blue plate with a big chip on the side, barely holding two halves of an honest to god watermelon, two mismatched knives stuck into the crisp surface. 

“Damn.” He hasn’t seen one in… well, a long time. He takes his gloves off, lays them over his knee before taking his half. It’s cold, moisture slipping to his fingertips and crawling towards his palm. The rind moves from a sea green to pure white, and he carves out a curved wedge of red with a satisfying noise. “What’d you pay for an heirloom fruit down in the City?” 

“I grew it.”

“Really! You got a secret garden you wanna show me?”

“Nobody sees the garden,” you say in a deep voice, and Drifter laughs, the sound of it falling off the patio and echoing up the tall marble walls. He loves it when you don’t take yourself seriously, even more than when you don’t take him seriously.

The watermelon is sweet and earthy, crunching to juice in his mouth. Good enough to curl his toes in his boots, and he can tell you’re watching him enjoy it. He makes a pleased noise mostly for show, and likes the sound of it anyway.

You don’t bother with the knife, taking a bite of your own slice that leaves a comic tooth-print carved in the watermelon, and Drifter pretends not to notice your jaw strength. “If you came all this way to chat, I’ll be impressed.”

“Hey, even I can take a break from business for a moment.” He makes a sweet face. “For you, anyway.”

You rest your foot up on the railing, focused on the fruit. “Umhm.”

“Seems to me you’re less a Guardian and more of a Risen, if you catch my meaning.” No point in beating around the bush, he’ll waste more of his time than yours. “But I’ve been wrackin’ my brain and I don’t feel like we ever crossed paths before.”

“You’re right. On both accounts.”

“Huh.” Where _were_ you, he wants to ask, that he never saw you once? What did you see? What have you survived? He wants to know almost as much as he wants to share. Anyone their age either goes legit, falls off the deep end, or gets got.

Watermelon juice hangs pink off your chin, caught by the sunlight, before your wrist comes up to smudge it away. He can imagine the taste. “Are you lonely?” 

“Business is boomin’, I barely got time to come down here and palaver with you! Am I lonely? Hah!” He smiles, scar tissue bunching on his face. “You ain’t?”

You look back out over the patio, to the view dominated by the Tower. It’s a long time before you answer. “This is a strange time to be alive.”

“Got that right.” He thinks about your big gun, your good aim, your tight and steady grip on brutality. Gambit brought out the best and worst in people—which was he seeing? “Hm. You miss the way things were?”

“No.” Drifter can tell there’s more to that answer, and waits until you decide to elaborate. He’s getting good at that, waiting for you, letting the spaces fill themselves in before he jumps in to help. “But they made more sense.”

Ah, that tracks. No one who lived through the Dark Ages is ever going to be really comfortable right now—why else is he living in a frozen footlocker dragging around the galaxy’s most dangerous Dyson sphere? “Heh, so it must’ve been a ‘misunderstanding’ what put you on probation with the Vanguard.”

You set aside a stripped chunk of watermelon rind. “They were upset that I ‘murdered’ a ‘civilian.’”

Well, that’s got layers to it! Drifter chuckles, knowing he shouldn’t. “Hold that thought. This is the kinda story that needs a drink.”

You let him get up, pick his way through your place to get to the booze. It’s not really good, the kind of paint stripper the hangar mechanics cook up to try and impress Guardians, and all he can find for glasses are mugs.

He finishes off the rest of his watermelon when he sits back down in a few large crunches and slurps, which he knows you’re watching. Tosses the rind off the patio, hands you a mug. “Now, tell ol’ Drifter all about your heinous crimes.”

“It was a man down in the City.” You shrug, tone genuinely casual. “I tracked it for a month to make sure. He would travel all over the districts to kill animals. Strays constantly, pets if he could find them.”

Drifter makes a derisive noise. “Man, who’s got that much free time?”

“On the new moon he went to kill a woman he had marked after a week of watching, so I shot him instead.” You shake your head. “The _fuss_ they kicked up…”

“Oh, I can imagine. They’re real sensitive about Guardian’s even threatenin’ violence against mortals.” He doesn’t have a taste for it himself anyway. “Just to play the devil’s advocate, sounds to me like you were just as content to be a predator as he was.”

Rolling your eyes, you finish the drink. It’s an obvious lure into a debate, but he can see in your years, hundreds of them, built up and solidified like tree rings, that you are unbothered. The conclusion of his generation is almost inevitably a form of sword logic.

“So you do it for justice?” He can’t resist leaning in, egging you on a little. “Or 'cause it felt good?”

“It’s necessary.” You have an expression like you think he’s being charming and puppyish. “Nature won’t miss something like that.”

Drifter has a clear image of you flipping the switch that erases every speck of supposedly higher intelligence from the system without much regret. Leave the worlds to the plants and animals and microbes, no philosophy or semiotics beyond the long slow march of balance, steady life and death at nature’s tempo.

It’s tempting, even sort of intoxicating in a way, to think about it. A fresh slate, nobody left to cut down the trees or drop nuclear bombs, nothing but birdsong on the wind.

“Good reason.” He grunts. “You know I’ve been gatherin’ a crew, right?”

“It’s all anybody talks about.” 

“I got a lot of hoops I like’em to jump through, make sure they’re in for the long haul.” He gestures, rolling his hand to indicate the many requests. “You’d lose interest halfway through, I think.”

You flash him a brief look of commiseration. “I’m a little old for that, yeah.”

“I’ll send you some coordinates. Let’s meet up, outside the City. I want to talk, one Risen to another.”

 

 

 

 

 

He sends you truly shitty coordinates, deliberately obtuse. It’d take some real orienteering to puzzle them out, but he’s not surprised when he shows up at the mountain campsite and you’re there, sitting with your feet dangling over a rocky outcrop. The view can’t be beat from that exact spot.

You’re in full armor, loaded up like you’re about to take on a strike single-handed. Maybe you thought this’d be a duel? He hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“So, whatcha think?” He gestures, encompasses both the campsite and the view. “Nice spot to get away from it all, huh.”

“I like that you like it.”

He taps a plate of your leg armor with the tip of his boot. “Scoot over.”

You shift, but he doesn’t think you actually move at all. When he sits, it’s closer than he’s been to you in more than a passing way, your armor feeling less like a barrier and more like an extension of your body.

The view really is good. Earth stretches out, green and gray and blue. The same colors it is when he’s in orbit, looking down at the storms and oceans painted over it.

You keep your eyes out on the forest and mountains while you talk. “So what’d you want to talk about?”

“With you? Everything.” He's too old to be smooth. “I ain’t met someone from that time who doesn’t have an old grudge or bad blood with me, and frankly? I like it.”

“I also like being your friend, if that’s what you’re saying.” You say it dryly.

“And I wanna _keep_ being your friend.” He stares until you have to look back at him. It feels better to be naked than to be genuine with anyone anymore. “You’ve felt it, right? That darkness in your guts, knowin’ the whole system’s gonna tip over the edge before long.” 

He watches you return to looking at the view, upset. You don’t live to their age without honing that sense. It must be strange to know everything is going to end, instinctively, but feel no compulsion to preach about it like Saladin. Some things are too big to fight.

“This is all doomed. And I think you know it, deep down.” Drifter wants to touch you—a hand on your back, against the nape of your neck, his hand in yours, but your body language says you’d throw him off the cliff. “Hell, you’re like me and the cockroaches—after it’s all done and dusted, we’ll still be here. But the rest of ‘em?”

He snorts, shaking his head. You don’t react to that, because it isn’t genuine, and you both know it. Drifter lets himself be quiet, lets you wait until he can be honest. “I’m gettin’ used to it again. People. But not all of ‘em are gonna make it. Good folks rarely do.”

Talk about getting soft in his old age. Drifter sighs, shakes it off, remembers his audience and smiles at you. “Anyway. I got a bug out bag with your name on it. Wanna bring your big fuck off gun to my big fuck off ship?”

“No. Thanks.” You look embarrassed for a moment—not by him, but yourself. “Earth’s the only place in the galaxy that was suited for… humans. Before the Traveler. I want to die here, breathing its air. I want my body consumed by its dirt.”

“Yeah, I knew it.” It’s how he’d pictured you, all these years. Born in the dirt, living in the dirt, surviving the Dark Ages in the dirt. At peace with it, now, looking forward to the long rest whenever it happens. “Had to ask, though.”

You reach out and touch his face, just your fingertips, more exploratory than comforting. Drifter looks back at you and feels all his years staring with him, wonders when and what you’re looking at him with. “You better not be feelin’ sorry for me.”

There’s a look in your eyes like you’re having fun, but it’s not mean. “I want your help.”

“With what?”

“My gun needs a name.”

He grins, shelving the old familiar pains quickly. “You’re gonna let me see the rifle.”

You shoot him a look, but there’s a smile included. “Don’t kiss and tell, Drifter.”

When you pull it out of transmat, you hold it out for him to look at, at first. Your body realigns itself in little ways to deal with the weight, and he gets to really take his time looking. It’s… a big gun.

The accurate and unkind word is primitive—it’s profile is long, spearlike, the metal some half-heartedly burnished alloy. It smells, which is weird, but worse is that it smells _good_ , like hot metal and burning dust, chemical pollutant. He doesn’t see where you load the rounds, and he can see already that the iron sights are just chips of metal roughly filed. It has no paint, no detail. Occasional worming solder lines. 

Drifter sets his hands on his hips and sighs. “Well, it’s ugly, and I love it.”

You offer it to him. “Use both hands. It’s heavy.”

“I think I know— damn, alright. It’s heavy.” You let him struggle to find a good balance with it instead of trying to correct him, which he appreciates. Shoulder-firing this would be a nightmare, but he’s seen you do it. You prefer kneeling or sitting. 

Holding it steady, you unlatch and swing out a spindly bipod halfway along the barrel, and gesture for him to go prone. Doesn’t give him the best mobility, but he’s not using it for real. This is just practice, a handshake hello.

You more or less lay on him, press him into the fragrant earth and make it real hard to focus on the gun. You know, too, the way you don’t hesitate to rearrange his body with your legs, your hands. Kicking his feet apart wide, making sure he’s braced against the ground, there’s no good reason your thigh has to be pressed against his ass like that, grinding his robes into the dirt. Not that he’s complaining.

The stock digs into his shoulder even after you adjust the way it sits, and he realizes it’s because your arms are just a bit longer and bigger: truly a custom job. Those big arms guide his hands to the best place to hold it, less like it’s delicately tuned art and more like an animal that needs to be pinned. Drifter doesn’t let himself rub his dick on the inside of his pants at the metaphor.

The scope is just glass. There are no distance markings or any kind of feedback from the gun. He feels like he’s aiming a trebuchet. “Can’t believe you use this in Gambit.”

“I was showing off. Here.” You reach past him to pat the body of the gun, where the magazine probably should’ve been stored. “It will only hold one shot at a time. The round is internally generated.”

“Where? Outta _what?_ This is kinetic substrate, not energy.”

“I don’t know.” You settle back down against him, let him pick out a target from the distance. A knot in a far off tree trunk. “The cooldown varies, based on active combatants within visible distance. Never shorter than ten seconds, never longer than two minutes.”

“You made this.” He hopes, anyway. “You gotta know how it works.”

“I don’t. My Ghost helped me forget.”

“Convenient.”

“Do you want to fire it or not?”

Your stupid, beautiful gun dislocates his shoulder with kickback on the first shot, snaps a little off the end of his collarbone and crunches his scapula like a dry leaf, distracts him so bad he doesn’t even see what the shot does to the tree.

It’d be a pain to wait until he’s back on the Derelict, within safe range of his own Ghost, so the two of you compromise—you get him settled in comfy back at the tent, cinch his headband down over his eyes like a blindfold, and keep him occupied until your Ghost heals him. He doesn’t get to see it, hear it, know how long it took to get there or know where it goes when it departs, doesn’t care to know any of that.

The mood is different than before, and he’s still got a hard on from earlier, mostly unbothered by the pain. You draw the handgun out of his robes slowly, more intimate than if you were undoing his trousers, and he lets you.

“You’ll have to let me try this one day.” He feels like your words hum around the grip or the barrel, something, you’ve got Trust near your mouth. Drifter knows instinctively there’s something about a smooth surface you just want to put your lips to, see how it feels. Everybody loves Trust.

“Maybe you’d learn a thing or two about detailing, hm?” God, he’d polish your gun for you. He’d make it shine, he’d carve a better stock, he’d embed microdiamonds spelling all the syllables of royalty along the barrel—

The feeling of laying back, letting you explore him and not being able to watch you is thick and peaceful. You tug at his robes but never rip anything, like you understand the effort of hand-made things. If you just wanted to unwrap him a little and watch he’d be happy, but watching him fire your gun must’ve lit a spark in you, too. You line the long muscles in his thighs with your lips, getting him hard with your mouth before you just let his cock lay against the crease in his hip, wet and untouched until he can’t stand it, reaches out to grab your hair and guide you back.

You let him do that, but the moment he tries to keep you down longer than you want, you don’t hesitate to yank his arm, set him off howling and laughing in pain.

When your quiet Ghost finally knits him back together, it’s a relief to be able to move with full mobility, but Drifter doesn’t feel a lot of motivation to upset the dynamic otherwise. He’s patient, doesn’t mind the tides of ache and relief you want to visit on him at your pace. It starts out feeling good, and then, turns into feeling safe, which should turn his stomach and kill the mood.

He can only assume it doesn’t because you understand what that kind of trust is, what it costs and how rare it is for him. For you.

“Think if I died right now,” he rasps, sleeping bag fabric sticking to the back of his thighs briefly as you lift his hips up, settle him back down resting against your own legs. “It’d be alright. You know?” It’d be a good note to end on.

“I would mind.” You’re speaking to him around your own fingers, noisily sucking and licking.

“Yeah?” Drifter’s body jerks once as he feels those fingers against his ass, but you’re gentle and thorough and stop for a moment to retrieve actual lube before you go further. Your bare hands have a texture totally unlike his own.

“I’d kill anything that got in the way of me fucking you right now.” You say it so matter of factly that he chuckles, flushed with feeling wanted, your fingers working slowly into him, not forcing but not waiting for him to loosen up, either, and he loves that, wriggles to try and get you deeper faster. The tent fabric is noisy as you move to hold yourself over him, trapping heat and air between your bodies. Drifter thinks for a moment of your quarters, hot and cramped and the watermelon on your fingers, running down your wrist.

He squirms and you hook your fingers finally just right and he gasps. “Keep goin’.”

“What do you want me to say? That Shin Malphur could show up and I’d leave you here with your ass open while I dealt with him?”

“Oh, you’d better hope that doesn’t—get around to him, hah—”

“I’d put your own pretty gun right here,” Your fingers strain and flex and drag perfectly against that spot that sends lightning up his spine. “Keep my place for me ‘til I came back.”

“What—the hell, you didn’t say you were such a—a freak—” That shouldn’t do it for him, but it does, it _really_ does, he grabs your shoulder, your neck, your hair, anywhere he can hang onto while his weight and yours negotiate a pace, half toying with the idea of maybe begging a little for Trust, but totally unwilling to give up your fingers for even a second.

You lean back, moving to drag the nails of your free hand up and down his chest, his stomach. “Hands off, let go.” Drifter stops trying to hold onto you and instead grabs whatever he can reach in the tent, arching loudly as soon as your other hand settles on his cock. He almost wants to try and get the blindfold off, see what you look like concentrating only on him, but he loves being at your mercy.

Drifter begs a little then, with noises and cusses and a little pleading, until you move your goddamn hand and jerk him off, mouth sealing too hot and too good over him right as he comes, into your mouth and against your tongue, shaking as he recovers.

You tug his headband off and he squints, out of breath and unwilling to move quite yet. But you look good in the soft, diluted light coming in through the canopy, pleased with yourself and flushed with effort. There’s a looseness in the tent like he might’ve pulled out one of the anchors in his ecstasy, which is a little funny.

The biggest parts of your armor are stacked to the side, but you don’t look any smaller. He can see you watching him—might be on your knees, but he’s a mess on the floor of the tent. Pillows and thermal rolls frame him and he knows he looks pretty good debauched. He must, for you to be making that face.

You level a grin at him that knocks the strength out of his knees, and he’s already laying down. “Why do you look like you’re done?”

“That was round _one_ , hotshot, don’t get too smug.” Drifter teases his tongue just barely past his lips, trying to marshal thoughts on how to get you back as quick as possible. 

You look away, clearing your throat. “I’ll think about it.”

He cocks his head the other direction, before patting the mess of bedding beside him. “Then think about it over here.”

You probably hadn’t pictured him for the cuddly type, and he’s not—well, won’t be, not until it gets colder. Right now he wants you down here with him. Shoulder to shoulder.

Shedding a couple more pieces of armor, you join him there, still in your body sheathe. Nowhere close to skin-to-skin, but you press against him anyway. Will there be time for him to find out what your body looks like? What scars you’ve carried this far?

He moves slow but you let him clean your hand with his mouth, sucking each finger in against his tongue for attention. The lube turns you flavorless but the texture, the noise, the promise lays a bed of coals in him for you.

Drifter holds your trigger finger in between his teeth like a prize, like he might bite down and swallow it for a good luck charm, and you tug it free, pressing your hand against his throat and holding him in place while you plant a slow, careful kiss on his mouth. No tongue.

Probably would’ve been breathless even if you hadn’t been putting real weight on his windpipe, but Drifter respects the finality of that, the way you lay back down beside him with no more intent. He watches you watch him at the closest range yet, wondering what stands out, what you think of him.

Like this, you aren’t taller than him. He can look into your eyes, and does. “Wish we’d met earlier.”

“I’m glad we didn’t.” You don’t look away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All Season long I said I'd take Gambit seriously, and here we are with a couple days left and my Notorious Hustle triumph at a cool 50% completion... alas! 
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> * I think The Rifle is mentioned to be in the heavy slot but it uses kinetic ammo-- this is a bend in the rules, but it ultimately doesn't matter since you wouldn't pick up ammo for it anyway. I just miss Icebreaker lmao  
> * I'm _guessing_ the gun Drifter carries is Trust: it's got the same loop on the grip, right?  
> * I still haven't finished the Drifter's loyalty quest so I'm guestimating at what his final little campsite looks like. Hey, maybe he's got more than one! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! :') Feel free to come say hi [on twitter!](https://twitter.com/roughmagik)


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